Brafree Running II, or WWCD (what would cavewoman do?)

[jschwab]

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/phys-ed-the-right-kind-of-sports-bra/

This article reads alot like the mumbo jumbo around why we need running shoes, so it made me laugh. Bulletin, ladies - your boobs don't bounce, they "figure-8".

 

[C. Beth Run.]

I'm immature enough that I

I'm immature enough that I have to inwardly giggle at research all about bouncy boobs!

Since seeing the original "bra-free" post I've been thinking about this. Is it hypocritical for us to say that our feet need to be free and are all we need to run well, and yet to strap down our boobs?

Here's my thought: Feet evolved to run. Breasts evolved to nurse and, many believe, to attract men. (I've heard the hypothesis that our female ancestors got bigger breasts after they became bipedal because once butts were no longer sticking out to catch the attention of males, breasts had to evolve to do that job!) So I'd guess that bouncing breasts probably annoyed running cavewomen...but from an evolutionary perspective, it was worth it to have bouncy breasts that contributed toward sexual attractiveness.

So...I think if cavewomen had sports bras available, they would have worn them, IF they were comfortable. That's what it comes down to. Tight compression bras, shelf bras, no bras...just wear what makes you the most comfortable, and I think that's "natural" enough!

 

[BFWendyBird]

  I'm uncomfortable with

I'm uncomfortable with boobs that fly up and hit me in the eye

 

[barefoot.zumba.runner]

I'm with Wendy, I'm thinking

I'm with Wendy, I'm thinking cavewomen probably had their means to tie down the girls if need be. Even if it were to wrap something snug bandealike 'fabric'/leather. While running barefoot is good for the feet, running brafree puts you at risk of damaging breast tissue (there's no real muscle/bones/tendons inside breasts to protect them from shock/bounce.) IMO I vote bra (AND good for, which inevitably reduces (though won't remove) bounce)

 

[Liz]

I'm with you, zumba. After i

I'm with you, zumba. After i read the first bra-free post, I tried it...once. My bra is my friend!

 

[jschwab]

There is the Amazon myth of

There is the Amazon myth of cutting off one's breast in order to be a warrior (just one, though, for pulling a bow). Wonder if there is other mythology around the breastless hunter/warrior/runner? At the beginningof women's long distance running, women just wore regular street bras. I know someone with DDD's who was too embarrassed to run until the Enell came along, so that is a factor for some women. I have found as my upper body strengthens with running that the muscle tissues underneath has really reduced the bounce. Maybe cavewomen were just in way better shape and had more muscle to tuck around the bouncy bits? I'm going to research and I'll let you know. There must be a bra musuem somewhere

 

[barefoot.zumba.runner]

maybe they tied boulders to

maybe they tied boulders to their boobs to keep them from bouncing around?

 

[Longboard]

C. Beth Run. wrote: Breasts

Breasts evolved to nurse and, many believe, to attract men. (I've heard the hypothesis that our female ancestors got bigger breasts after they became bipedal because once butts were no longer sticking out to catch the attention of males, breasts had to evolve to do that job!) ...but from an evolutionary perspective, it was worth it to have bouncy breasts that contributed toward sexual attractiveness.

I've always been under the impression that female breasts are only sexually attractive to civilized men that have been conditoned to see them as such.

That's why modern day bipedal humans still living today in ancient tribal traditions and conditions don't cover the breasts of the females. They don't see them as sexual at all.

It was only when the Christian missionaries introduced the strange new concept of mating face to face that breasts replaced butts as an attracting force.

Bipedal man was chasing down upright running women with only one thing in mind being motivated by her bare butt, flowing hair, wide hips, and yes, it's true as well...her dirty soles...., for millions of years before the missionaries introduced the new rules which eventually ended up sexualizing the breasts.

Modern day indigenous tribal boys like to giggle, but it's never associated with any booby sightings.

 

[jschwab]

Hmm, interesting,

Hmm, interesting, Longboard...



Wikipedia says Spartan women involved in athletics wore special bras! So, you ladies were right - the "Jogbra" is old as the hills!

 

[Barefoot TJ]

Yes, Longboard is very, er,

Yes, Longboard is very, er, uh, interesting.

 

[C. Beth Run.]

Interesting, Longboard. I

Interesting, Longboard. I guess my question (from an evolutionary perspective) would be, then what is the purpose behind larger breasts? HAVING breasts is important for breastfeeding & therefore for babies to survive & for the species to continue...but breast SIZE doesn't matter for the purpose of breastfeeding. (Mine are itty bitty and they nursed two kids remarkably successfully...one child for 2 1/2 yrs & the other for 1 1/2 yrs.) And many mammals have really small teats when they are not nursing.

So why would breasts have evolved to be larger than our ancestors' breasts were, if not for the purpose of sexual attractiveness? Evolutionary fitness is specifically tied to propogation. Someone who is able to have lots of babies (who are healthy enough to eventually have their own children) is considered fitter from an evolutionary perspective, from my understanding. So I'd think that larger breasts in humans were probably linked in some way to survival (through childbearing age) or to sexual attractiveness. And I can't think of a way larger breasts would have have helped humans survive.

I suppose you could argue that males specifically chose females with larger breasts since they assumed those breasts would be better able to feed babies. But is this really what early human males were considering when choosing a mate? I think pure sexual attraction probably played a larger role than logical reasoning.

I'll admit I'm not at all an evolution expert though; it's just a topic I find interesting enough to have read up on it.

I do think that some societies have seen breasts as sexually attractive for a long time. Solomon in the Bible wrote about the loveliness of his bride's breasts. That being said, I do wish our society wasn's so obsessed with them. Many women have shame associated with breastfeeding in public since breasts are so oversexualized in America, and that's a pity.

 

[Blind Boy]

Do we know that the amount of

Do we know that the amount of breast tissue has increased over time? I think we can disregard fat for now since I'm pretty certain that body fat % has gone up significantly in the last 1000 years and even more the further back you go. Since women tend to store fat around the hips and in their breasts before it goes anywhere else this might be one reason breast sizes have gone up.
I have a theory on why the amount of tissue varies as well and it is not about attractiveness. Since early humans were living in packs, and we still do to some extent, and child birth is such a risky activity combined with the long pregnancy and the time it takes for a human child to learn to follow the pack around every child is extremely valuable to the group. If the mother died during labor someone else would have to make sure the child survives which is why it might be useful for the group if some of the women produce more milk than their own children need.
Also, pure sexual attraction is often pretty logical in the most direct sense. Instincts tend to work in favor of both the individual and the species as a whole. Then again, since every modern society, from Mesopotamia up to today, have tried to make rules about what is and what isn't sexually acceptable I believe our instincts have become dulled and somewhat misdirected by now.

 

[C. Beth Run.]

I have heard/read that once

I have heard/read that once human ancestors became bipedal, breast size increased. Unfortunately, that's just a fact that stuck in my head so I don't know where I heard it!

Ooh...thank you, Google! Here's an article on it. And a quote from the article...


So it has been widely theorised that the plump buttock and bosom of modern women are sexual ornaments, selected for by ancestral males2. Seen from a distance the adult female form, either from behind or from the front, can be recognised as distinct from the male of the species. An hourglass figure, plus youthfulness, would have attracted male hominids looking for mating opportunity3. The hourglass figure remains attractive to modern males. Over the centuries females attempting to increase their mate choice have dressed to exploit this shape (corsets, bustles and wonder bras). If ancestral males had not shown a preference for the mutation producing symmetrical, plump bosoms, modern women's chests would resemble the flat thoraxes of the other apes.


As for breast size/milk...the thing is, milk production is NOT tied to breast size (confirmed in the article above). It seems like it would be, but it's not. But maybe our ancestors logically assumed it was....

 

[stomper]

 FWIW, I'm a published

FWIW, I'm a published biologist (or was at one time anyway), though evolution is not my specialty.

The concept we're all playing with here is called "sexual selection" -- it's the development and continued existence of traits that don't seem to have any particular direct relevance to survival (such as gigantic pendulous mammaries). But if those traits make you attractive to mates, damn yes, they will continue into the next generation. There are some fun examples in nature like huge tail feathers on some birds.

Yeah, not all cultures see breasts as sexually as we do now, but that doesn't mean they're not subject to sexual selection. I think it's kind of reasonable for mates to be attracted to large breasts since they definitely are correlated with body fat, and body fat is (to our primitive eyes) a sign of being well-fed and therefore a potentially good mate.

Unfortunately this, like practically all evolutionary arguments, is really hard to disprove (disproving being the essential thing in science) because doing so really nicely would take long term manipulative experiments involving human breast size. Not something that's going to happen, for better or worse.

My bet is that in the past breast sizes were typically a bit smaller, especially among the kind of people who had to run frequently. And when they did, they probably tied them up. Check out the tunic on this ancient greek athlete, she has ONE breast covered oh so stylishly...

 

[C. Beth Run.]

Oh, stomper, the body fat

Oh, stomper, the body fat thing totally makes sense! Good insight there.

Off to search Road Runner Sports' website for "one-breasted running tunic...."

 

[Longboard]

Still, just about every

Still, just about every isolated tribe discovered has barebreasted women roaming about while the "real" private parts are covered.

Possibly breasts are naturally looked at as beautiful by men, without being singled out as specifically sexual. It would'nt be surprising, since ALL of the females body is supposed to be attractive to the male. The idea of making breasts a "private part" that must be covered because it is so sexual is what was created by human cultural intervention.

In Dr. Howell's "The Barefoot Book" he talks about why high heels on women are considered to be sexy.

He explains that among other things they create the appearence of a high arch, and that high arches are assumed to be sexier and more attractive than low arches.

Things like arch height are probably minor subtle nuances that could make one female more attractive to males than another, and in un-biased isolated cultures breast size may be a factor in attractivness, but not necessarily one of any more importance than arch height.

Beth mentions King Solomon's description of his wife's beautiful breasts.

Solomon, son of King David, preceeded Jesus Christ by around 1000 years. Still, that is a very short time ago relatively speaking. Christians did not invent the missionary position, they just made a point of promoting it when prosalytizing natives. There's no YouTube video of King David as he planted Solomon's seed available for confirmation, but my money would be on a missionary position encounter with one of his wives.

Solomon himself had 700 wives, and 300 concubines!

I wonder which one's breasts he was contemplating when the recorder of the scriptures documented the statement.

 

[C. Beth Run.]

With all Solomon's wives,

With all Solomon's wives, that old quote from Seinfeld comes to mind: "Yes, they're real. And they're fabulous." We know they were all real back then, and to have been singled out among so many other pairs of breasts...they must have been fabulous! arty:

On a serious note, I'd be curious to know more about the connection between breasts as an element of sexual attraction, and breasts as an erogenous zone. What came first...males being sexually attracted to breasts, or females liking their breasts being handled?

 

[Longboard]

C. Beth Run. wrote:... I'd be

... I'd be curious to know more about the connection between breasts as an element of sexual attraction, and breasts as an erogenous zone. What came first...males being sexually attracted to breasts, or females liking their breasts being handled?

Good question. The sensual pleasure of the breast being handled is obviously biological and has nothing to do with cultural meddling.

Remember, having one's feet rubbed can also be a very sensual experience for many females, yet most

of those women would not assume that sexual pleasures are being enjoyed by the male rubbee.

 

[jschwab]

Yeah, size is irrelevant -

Yeah, size is irrelevant - it's how much milk-producing tissue there is. I have big ones (whether fat, thin, whatever) but virtually no milk-producing tissue. For all my kids I struggled to produce a single ounce of breastmilk for the whole day (like getting water from a stone) whereas some of my totally flat-chested friends could make their milk squirt across the room.

I think it is more likely a Venus of Willendorf thing going on, where fat is a sign of fertility. It's just an outward sign of an inner capability. It's like how guys with visible muscles attract more attention, but a wiry skinny guy might actually be stronger. It's just a biological symbol.

 

[Longboard]

jschwab wrote: It's like how

It's like how guys with visible muscles attract more attention, but a wiry skinny guy might actually be stronger.

But of course in this millenium the guy that can bring home the bacon is more likely to look like the classic skinny nerdy geek, and should be more desirable to the woman seeking stability for her future family. Hunting down animals and fighting off other men ain't necessarily so important these days. Bill Gates can hire an armed team of mercenaries to do that for him, and some of the smarter girls realize that by now!